Dropcam Unplugged!

Here is the exciting conclusion to my quest to make my beloved Dropcam completely wireless, so I can mount it outdoors or anywhere I want!

I love my Dropcam even more now! I can tote it with me anywhere in the house, and set it up anywhere I need to keep an eye on things. It helps me keep an even closer eye on my disabled son at all times. Helps me see who is at the front door and what’s going in front of my house at night.

UPDATE: UPDATE: The battery lasted about 24 hours before it needed to be recharged. I only use it this way occasionally, so I can’t say how long that Royal battery would keeping holding a charge, if you used it round-the-clock. But we use the Royal Battery for other uses, often and it still is going strong after a year of heavy use. It still charges up fully and I haven’t noticed a loss of capacity.

You never reported back with the final battery usage of how long the portable battery powered the dropcam before having to recharge or swap batteries? Also did you ever look into any solar polar ideas since your camera would be outside and have the ability to be powered majority of the day using solar energy? I wonder if there were any similar products out there? I’m also working on a similar project with my dropcam 😉

I was thinking the same thing as Brandon…. How long did the battery power the dropcam before it died? I’m thinking I could probably rig up a small solar array that charged the battery during the day while powering then device and then at night there would be no trickle charge into the device but the battery power would continue to power the camera.

Hi Joe J,
I just answered Brandon below too. But thank you, to both of you, for calling my attention to the update issue. I just added the info to the blog post. The short answer is: The battery pack charged the Dropcam for about 24 hours before it needed to be recharged. I only use my Dropcam on the battery pack occasionally, so I haven’t looked into the solar powered possibility. Several people have mentioned that in the comments of the YouTube page: http://youtu.be/ZBs7LpFNjHA

Hi Brandon,
Thanks for the heads-up! I added my results about the battery life to the YouTube version of this video. But forgot that I had the Vimeo video in this blog page. (Vimeo doesn’t have annotations … well they kinda do now, but that’s another blog post). I need swap that video to the YouTube version in which I say (2:08 mark) it lasts for about 24 hours before needing to be recharged.﻿
Here’s the exact spot in the video: http://youtu.be/ZBs7LpFNjHA?t=2m8s

If you are watching it on a cell phone, I’ve noticed that sometimes annotations don’t show up. So, I very much appreciate, you reminding me to put those results in writing on this blog and not just in the video! Thank you, Brandon!
Mimi